Julie Christie - Anthony Hayward

Julie Christie has enchanted cinema-goers for four decades. Born on her father's tea plantation in Assam, India, she became an icon of the 1960s through her spellbinding appearances in films such as Billy Liar!, Darling (for which she won an Oscar), Doctor Zhivago and Far From the Madding Crowd. In the 1970s Christie teamed up with her lover, actor Warren Beatty, in McCabe & Mrs Miller (gaining her another Oscar nomination), Shampoo and Heaven Can Wait, as well as starring in the cinematic masterpieces The Go-Between and 'Don't Look Now'. But, by the early 1980s she had disappeared from the crowd, left Hollywood for her Welsh smallholding and concentrated on humanitarian causes and more serious films. A third Oscar nomination in 1988, for Afterglow, and a much publicized facelift brought the actress back into the public eye. However, as she approached her sixtieth birthday in April 2000, Christie showed little inclination to make a permanent return to the screen.;Anthony Hayward's biography reveals the intriguing story of her parents' colonial background in British India, the antics that landed Christie in trouble at school, the insecurity that has always dogged the reluctant star and the moments when she clashed with top directors David Lean, John Schlesinger and Joseph Losey.